Contracts for the sale of cargoes of sugar, C&F Incoterm Bangladesh, between English seller and Czechoslovakian buyer / Termination of contract due to buyer's alleged failure to provide a letter of credit in accordance with contractual provisions / Law applicable to the merits in absence of agreement of the parties / Contracts signed in Bangladesh / Place of arbitration, Stockholm, as fixed by the ICC Court / Reference to The Hague Convention of 1955, Art. 3(1) / Seller's domicile is strong connecting factor

The parties entered in Bangladesh into contracts of sale under which the English seller was to provide two cargoes of sugar C&F (Bangladesh) and the Czechoslovakian buyer was to provide confirmed letters of credit within a specified time. Seller claims damages for alleged non-performance of buyer's obligation.

'The applicable law

Seller, as stated in the Terms of Reference, maintained that the dispute should be resolved with the application of English law, while Buyer maintained that the law of Bangladesh should be applied, since the contracts were entered into and signed in Dacca and the cargoes should be shipped to Bangladesh. However, Buyer did not present any evidence on the law of Bangladesh relating to the legal questions of the case and did not wish the arbitrator to perform his own research on such law but requested him to resolve the case assuming that the law of Bangladesh conformed with the relevant general principles of international commercial law.

The seller's domicile, under most national laws and under the 1955 Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to International Sales art. 3(1), is a strong connecting factor to the law of the seller's country. Although the contracts were negotiated and signed in Dacca where Buyer - without having an establishment there - was represented by E... and concluded re-sale contracts under barter arrangements with the government of Bangladesh and the goods were to be shipped to Bangladesh to be received by ultimate buyers in that country, I do not think that these factors would outweigh the seller's domicile as connecting factor. I therefore rule that the dispute shall be resolved according to English law.'